Your 12-year-old daughter just asked for a bra from Victoria's Secret. And it's all Mike Myers's fault.

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When future film historians comb through the Happy Meal detritus of the 21st century, trying to figure out what killed animation as an art form, will they recognize the corrosive influence of the Shrek movies? Will anybody even remember a time when feature-length cartoons amounted to more than a scattershot mix of pointless celebrity shtick and feeble pop-culture references, plus a few fart jokes for the kids? Look past the ungainly, magic-free photorealism of this fairy-tale world, with its video-game refugees and fake-lens flares, and you can practically see the focus groups and advertising execs who've vetted every iota of its content. What's truly demoralizing, though, is that Shrek's success has now begun to infect the Pixar universe: Lasseter and Company have always had a weakness for soggy Randy Newman numbers, but the putrid "Life Is a Highway" montage in Cars would have been unthinkable before the Shrek series started trotting out stale singles from the likes of Rupert Holmes and Smash Mouth. Must we start teaching our kids to be hip and knowing and cynically synergistic straight out of the uterus? If you'll excuse me, I need to go wish upon a star.